@occupy @theGreenparty Fracking may transform next decade

This piece from Fullermoney raises some interesting points for debate.

Basically it’s about the U.S.A. becoming energy self-reliant.

The first aspect is that there would be no need for them to worry about the Middle East or S.American oil supplies.

Second point is that there are probably huge fracking fields around the Globe.

We in Britain could be kept afloat by our resources, as could many other countries.

Would Argentina be so hot and bothered about The Falklands, if they found reserves in their vast hinterland?

A really good one was the report, some time back, that Israel has undersea resources equivalent to Saudi Arabia’s oil fields and that’s 60% of the World’s known resources. This could heighten tensions in The Middle East, as the price of oil would plummet worldwide.

This drop in the price of oil would be more significant as the awakening giant of China is busily pursuing Fracking possibilities in its own territories and would need less imported oil (the main reason for recent fuel price rises)

It could well mean the end of the Global warming fanatics. My personal view is the Anthropocentric Global Warming Scare grew out of a political necessity to conserve our supplies of fossil fuel (this scare did not exist until the Early 90’s, when we stopped teaching about The Energy Crisis in schools and Green Issues jumped into the Science syllabus).

Suddenly, there was a lot of financial support for these groups. This may now dry up for those supporting Carbon Footprint preaching.

The U.S. is the closest it has been in almost 20 years to achieving energy self-sufficiency, a goal the nation has been pursuing since the 1973 Arab oil embargo triggered a recession and led to lines at gasoline stations.

Domestic oil output is the highest in eight years. The U.S. is producing so much natural gas that, where the government warned four years ago of a critical need to boost imports, it now may approve an export terminal. Methanex Corp., the world’s biggest methanol maker, said it will dismantle a factory in Chile and reassemble it in Louisiana to take advantage of low natural gas prices. And higher mileage standards and federally mandated ethanol use, along with slow economic growth, have curbed demand.

The result: The U.S. has reversed a two-decade-long decline in energy independence, increasing the proportion of demand met from domestic sources over the last six years to an estimated 81 percent through the first 10 months of 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg from the U.S. Department of Energy. That would be the highest level since 1992.

“For 40 years, only politicians and the occasional author in Popular Mechanics magazine talked about achieving energy independence,” said Adam Sieminski, who has been nominated by President Barack Obama to head the U.S. Energy Information Administration. “Now it doesn’t seem such an outlandish idea.”

The transformation, which could see the country become the world’s top energy producer by 2020, has implications for the economy and national security — boosting household incomes, jobs and government revenue; cutting the trade deficit; enhancing manufacturers’ competitiveness; and allowing greater flexibility in dealing with unrest in the Middle East.

My view – Once George P Mitchell pioneered the fracking method for extracting shale gas at a very commercial rate in the late 1990s, the seemingly unobtainable ‘holy grail’ of energy independence for the USA became a practical possibility. When this game-changing technology was adapted for the successful extraction of shale oil, the previously unthinkable prospect of the USA as the world’s largest producer of energy became a probably for the next decade.

This will require none of the expensive subsidies thrown at ethanol and various inefficient renewable technologies. The USA is blessed with the world’s largest known reserves of shale oil and the second largest known reserves of shale gas. Moreover, American innovation created the means for extracting this vital resource – a technological breakthrough that other countries are now scrambling to achieve.